Photo of Elijah Lawrence by Luke Zayas/True To The Cru
BELTON — Elijah Lawrence and his UMHB teammates came into Saturday’s regular season finale not knowing whether or not they would get another chance to play in front of their home crowd this season.
That was out of their hands, largely resting in the fate of a game being played halfway across the state in Marshall. So instead, Lawrence and the Crusaders focused on what they could control: winning their regular season finale and securing a share of the American Southwest Conference title on senior day against Howard Payne.
It took a full 40 minutes to do it against HPU’s relentless defensive pressure and up-tempo offensive style, which was keyed by 6-foot-5 senior guard Ben Phillip and his 36 points. But The Cru never wavered, backed by nearly 1,000 vocal fans, and pulled ahead for good with 2:11 to go, winning 98-91 in a high-scoring rematch with the Yellow Jackets.
“Every game, I come in with the mindset that it’s going to be a dogfight,” Lawrence said afterwards. “Every game is up for grabs. It’s about having the mentality to pull it out in the end.”
The victory gave UMHB its first share of the conference title since the 2021-22 campaign, as the Crusaders blazed through their ASC schedule with a 5-1 record while going 18-7 overall against one of the strongest non-conference slates in Division III. Hardin-Simmons, who finished tied atop the standings with UMHB, will host next week’s ASC Tournament as the No. 1 seed by virtue of the head-to-head point differential tiebreaker after the Cowboys beat ETBU, 91-83, on Saturday.
“The way I addressed it with the team before every practice this week was, ‘We have an opportunity to play for a championship,” first-year head coach Sam Patterson said. “We can’t worry about what’s not in our control [as far as hosting the ASC Tournament]. I even told them before the game, ‘You can go an entire career—collegiate, professional—and never have an opportunity to play for a championship. So take this, enjoy the moment, and go out and play well.’”
Lawrence had a team-high 22 points for The Cru, shooting 4-of-7 from 3-point range before extending UMHB’s lead to 94-89 on a key fast-break layup with 41 seconds left. With the game hanging in the balance, Donta Coady leapt up and blocked a 3-point attempt from Phillip, before Cam Stinson grabbed the loose ball for a steal and lofted it deep down the court to Lawrence, who was racing to the other end. Lawrence received the pass in stride, scoring off the glass for an uncontested layup as the home crowd roared in approval.
“Credit to [Donta] on that play,” Lawrence said. “He had a defensive stop, he got the ball back, and then me, Cam, and Tay just swarmed the ball. So shout-out to my teammates. I can’t even take credit for that play. I was there to receive the ball at the end but that was a collective effort.”
In similar fashion to its previous two home wins in conference play, UMHB stepped up in crunch time when positive momentum was needed most. With 9:44 to go, HPU put together an 8-0 run sparked by back-to-back layups from athletic guard Avant Coleman. The spurt took the Yellow Jackets from a three-point deficit to a five-point lead, yet another one of the 15 lead changes in a game that saw the advantage flip-flop 11 times in the opening 20 minutes alone.
But the veteran-led Crusaders wasted little time issuing a counter. Senior center Connor Zamiara—making his 25th start of the season—scored in the paint, snapping HPU’s uncontested run. The Rochester, New York native then rebounded a missed layup on UMHB’s next possession and added a putback, pulling the Crusaders within one.
Still, HPU stayed in front for the next several minutes until Lawrence knocked down a step-back 3 and the senior duo of Zachary Engels and Donta Coady sprang into action with a fast-break at the five-minute mark.
With UMHB trailing 82-80, Engels blocked a shot from HPU’s Jordan McClendon and immediately pushed the ball upcourt in a 2-on-1 break. Just past midcourt, Engels fired a pass to Coady, who was running parallel, and the senior forward finished the transition play with a momentum-grabbing layup through contact. Coady sank the free throw, giving UMHB back an 83-82 lead.
Phillip answered by connecting on a 3 of his own—one of eight on the day for the Boerne, Texas product—but Engels showed up again just two minutes later. The Crusader wing used his finesse in the paint, scoring on a right-handed, turnaround hook shot for an 87-85 advantage.
UMHB never trailed from that point on, aided by another timely 3 from Lawrence, another key block from Coady, and two HPU turnovers in the final 46 seconds.
“I’m really proud of these seniors,” Patterson noted. “They carried us. I’m glad they went out with a championship in the regular season.”
“Since Day 1, we established a culture and community that is senior-led and player-led,” said Lawrence, who spent this season at UMHB after stints at Oral Roberts University and John Brown University. “With the teams that I’ve been on in my past, the player-led teams are the most connected teams. All of us as a senior group, we come together every single day and stay connected. It starts in practice and carries over to the games.”
UMHB led for a little less than 25 minutes of game time in its regular season finale, bouncing back nicely from the bitter 86-80 loss at Hardin-Simmons seven days prior. The Cru shot 12-of-32 from 3-point range, tallying a double-digit total from long-range for the fourth time in the last five contests, and had eight more fast-break points (17-9) than an HPU squad that came into Saturday averaging 18.3 transition points per game, the 13th-most in Division III.
Most importantly, The Cru held everyone in HPU’s rotation not named Ben Phillip to limited production. McClendon was the only other Yellow Jacket in double figures with 11 points, and excluding Phillip, HPU shot just 3-of-15 from beyond the arc.
“They’re hard to guard in the fact that they typically play five guards out there and use that dribble-drive,” Patterson said. “You saw a chess match a little bit with us going inside and then playing off the perimeter.”
HPU got out to an 8-1 run in the opening minutes, but UMHB quickly reeled the Yellow Jackets in, starting with a short-range shot from Engels and a corner 3 from Coady. Those two, along with Lawrence, emerged as The Cru’s offensive catalysts, with Coady scoring 20 points for the second time this season and Engels posting his seventh double-double (16 points, 10 rebounds).
By the 15:25 mark, UMHB had its first lead, going up 11-10 on a left wing 3 from Engels. All through the first half, the seniors led the way, as Cam Stinson hit a 3 of his own mere seconds after Jackson Tomlin tied the game at 26, and Lawrence connected from long range for a 48-44 lead on a shot that barely rippled the net as it fell through. The very next possession? Engels knocked down a corner 3.
UMHB led 53-47 at halftime, a decent, yet marginal advantage against an explosive offensive attack that came in averaging an ASC-leading 91.9 points per game. In the first meeting between the two, the first several minutes of the second half saw UMHB pull away. But in Round 2, things only got tighter coming out of the intermission.
Hudson Johnson briefly extended UMHB’s lead to eight before Phillip sank back-to-back 3s for HPU. From that point until just 11 seconds remained, neither side’s lead grew wider than six, yet another down-to-the-wire duel for The Cru, who have won nine games with a single-digit margin this season.
“We don’t want anything given to us,” Patterson said. “I feel like in all of these games, we’ve been the team that has earned it in the way that we’ve won close games.”
They celebrated the conference co-championship in the moments after Saturday’s victory, a milestone for a team that was picked third in the ASC’s October preseason poll. But it was still only a milestone, not the end goal for the conference portion of the season. That comes next week, when UMHB heads back to Abilene for the ASC Tournament, looking to cut down nets for the first time since 2022.
The Crusaders enter as the tournament’s No. 2 seed and will face third-seeded East Texas Baptist in a 5 p.m. Friday semifinal. UMHB is 2-0 against the Tigers this season, including an 87-84 overtime win in Belton on Feb. 7. A win would put The Cru in Saturday’s ASC title game against the winner of Hardin-Simmons and Howard Payne, with the league champion earning an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
“They present some challenges in terms of their size,” Patterson said, looking ahead to a third matchup against ETBU. “They’re good defensively, so it’s not easy to score against them. I’m excited to have an opportunity to play them again, based on how the game went last time. It was a good game when we played in Marshall too. We’ll be off tomorrow, then we’ll get after it.”
